Varieties of home-grown marijuana are displayed for inspection during the weekly farmers market at the Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center in Riverside in 2011. The city closed the farmers market and dozens of dispensaries in a multi-year battle that cost more than $800,000 in legal fees.

Riverside’s seven-year battle to enforce its ban on medical marijuana dispensaries cost taxpayers at least $804,962 in legal fees, an amount that raises most residents’ eyebrows even if they believe the fight was worth it.

“That’s a lot of money that we don’t have,” Janice Bielman said, but added she’s glad the city closed down several dispensaries in her Magnolia Center neighborhood.

“It has no business in our city,” she said.

California voters approved the medical use of marijuana in 1996, but sale and use of marijuana remain illegal under federal law. Few cities have created regulations to allow dispensaries and many have enacted bans. Palm Springs is the only Inland city to allow dispensaries.

Riverside prohibited medical marijuana facilities through its zoning code in 2007 and took a leading role in fighting legal challenges and using court injunctions to close dispensaries. In 2013, the city won a case at the California Supreme Court that established cities’ right to block dispensaries through zoning.

That victory didn’t come cheap. Since 2010, the city has paid more than $703,000 to Best Best & Krieger and nearly $102,000 to Greines Martin Stein & Richland for legal services, along with an uncalculated but “significant amount of work” by the city attorney’s staff, according to city information.

In an email provided in response to a public records request, city spokesman Phil Pitchford noted that the fees were for work involving “more than 80 dispensaries,” and that officials expect court judgments will allow them to recoup up to half of what was spent.

PUBLIC CONCERNS

Some residents question why the council picked the marijuana fight in the first place, contrary to the will of state voters and, some argue, without consulting Riverside constituents.

“I would rather have seen them take a middle course to where (dispensaries) could be in” a designated area, said Sally Goodsite, one of several residents who stopped by a National Night Out event at Bielman’s house Tuesday.

Goodsite said she doesn’t think marijuana facilities belong in residential areas, but she knows people who have benefited from using the drug, such as a friend with glaucoma.

“I don’t think Riverside ever set out to be a trail blazer on the issue,” Councilman Mike Gardner said. “The council was not happy about the precedent of the state effectively overriding the city’s land use authority.”

Councilman Steve Adams said about 10 years ago, officials began hearing from other cities about dispensaries “showing up and creating a lot of problems,” so they wanted to address the issue head-on.

Adams didn’t recall whether the council had a public discussion before making the decision to block dispensaries, but he and Gardner said most of the residents they heard from opposed the facilities and wanted them closed.

One concern was the impacts dispensaries could have on neighborhoods, such as crime, Gardner said, citing an armed robbery at one Riverside facility.

Police Chief Sergio Diaz said the department has never analyzed crime connected with dispensaries, but news reports note a 2010 multi-agency raid on a dispensary whose owner was suspected of selling methamphetamine and cocaine, and a 2013 altercation between a dispensary security guard and SUV driver that ended with the driver shot and the guard injured.

Several residents in Bielman’s neighborhood said they saw customers leave the dispensary with marijuana, go down the street and sell it to people, including teenagers.

“It was completely out of control, so I could see why the city had to come in and take the heavy hand,” resident Gary Coffer said.

TAX AND REGULATE?

Others say those concerns are overblown.

“I don’t believe that’s valid,” said Michael Eppolito, a Riverside resident and proponent of a ballot measure that would permit, tax and regulate a small number of dispensaries in the city.

He works near numerous dispensaries in Jurupa Valley, he said, and “There’s no increase in police. You don’t hear anything special (about crimes) in the paper.”

Eppolito declined to discuss the reason he uses medical marijuana, but he said not all patients are in his position of being able to work, and to drive to dispensaries outside the city limits.

Rather than enacting bans and shutting dispensaries down, resident Zeke Candelario said, a better course would be to regulate and tax them, an idea San Bernardino officials are now considering.

Pointing to Colorado and Washington state, where voters have approved recreational use of marijuana, Candelario predicted that within five years legalization of marijuana will “spread across the country like wildfire.”

Coffer said he’d be OK with the city allowing one dispensary in each of the city’s seven wards – but not near homes, schools, churches or alcohol sales – and holding a drawing to give out the licenses. “Then tax ‘em,” he said. “Those are cash cows.”

His suggestion is similar to what Eppolito’s ballot proposal would do. But even though proponents got enough signatures to put the measure before voters in 2015, it’s tied up in court. In June, then-City Attorney Greg Priamos sued the Riverside County Registrar of Voters to block the issue from the ballot.

The suit argues the measure is illegal because it would force the city to violate state and federal laws.

That case means the city continues to rack up marijuana-related legal costs. But with Priamos – who spearheaded the marijuana fight – now serving as lead counsel for Riverside County, the city could be at a turning point.

Adams and Gardner consider the city’s anti-dispensary fight a success, but Gardner has said that if the city loses the case against the registrar, the right thing to do would be to put the measure on the ballot.

Alicia Robinson has been at The Press-Enterprise since 2007 and has covered Riverside and local government for most of that time, but she has also written about Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic.Two big questions Alicia tries to answer with stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?

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